


all the words from you i swallowed down, kept close

by unchartedandunknown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mutual Pining, this is MY sandbox I get to write whatever tf I want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26162974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchartedandunknown/pseuds/unchartedandunknown
Summary: As Yuri has learned throughout his life from Ashe, understanding something may just mean looking at it a second time.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	all the words from you i swallowed down, kept close

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this while listening to mxmtoon’s almost home

_five times Yuri should have looked twice, and the one time he does._

i.

They are, in this circumstance, friends only within the hour spent in this park under the shades of trees older than they’ll ever be, digging into the sand with the determination of children playing without worries of the future. In the dying setting sun, their shadows flit across the playground as the children leave one by one until they are the only ones left, too small to climb the monkey bars but young enough to not stop trying. The other boy’s parents call him when they’re eating sand below the bars after having fallen for the fifth time, and the boy is apologetic but he waves a cheery goodbye before he leaves.

Because Yuri hasn’t learned to treasure names yet, he doesn’t remember the boy’s name, confining him to this small, unimportant moment in the playground as he waves goodbye, and leaves, the last in the playground, to find his mother.

  
  
  
  
  
  


ii.

Courtesy of the librarian, Yuri’s helping cart books from one class into the library. Two boys fly by in familiar uniforms - the basketball team, then. One of them pushes the cart by accident as they go by just so, enough for a few of the loosely shelved books to rattle out to the ground. Yuri yells at them, but they disappear around the corner down the hall, and he sighs, accepting his lesser fate, and bends down to pick up the books.

A new set of footsteps sound down the hall. Yuri looks up, ready to tell the person off, but the new face bends down beside him to help clean up with an earnest face and a friendly smile that seems oddly familiar, though Yuri can’t place it. He handles the books with a sort of reverence Yuri admires, smoothing out pages that bent as they fell open and trailing a finger down a cracked spine like he can soothe the pages in between.

Yuri flips one of the books he’s picked up in his direction to tap the title. “Have you read this one yet?”

“Oh, no. I don’t have English this semester. Have you?”

“Yeah.” Does reading the SparkNotes at 10pm to hand in your essay at midnight count?

“What did you think about it?”

_Shit._

Yuri puts on a false, polite smile. “I enjoyed it. The way it explored how closely appearances affect reality and how appearance can even _become_ reality was interesting to see with each character’s different problems and how they went about trying to solve it.”

The boy smiles much more genuinely in return. “I’m glad you enjoyed it! Maybe I’ll read it before it’s assigned to us so I have some time to plan for the essay. Are you taking these books to the library?”

“For now. One of the classrooms is being repurposed, so we have to move the items temporarily until we find a free classroom.”

The boy follows Yuri along to cart the books to the library, introduces himself as _Ashe Ubert,_ a name Yuri only recognizes because it’s someone in Dimitri’s circle and said in passing by Hapi, mentions renewing a book he has, and now that he can see Ashe in this environment - the dimly lit library with shelves upon shelves of books, tables empty after school, quiet except for the tapping of a few students still working at the computers and printing projects - he realizes why he seems so familiar.

“You’re the boy that’s usually in the corner on one of the couches, aren’t you?”

“You noticed me?” Ashe laughs sheepishly, scratching his cheek. “I come here to study for most of the lunch period.”

“We’re here at the same time, but you probably haven’t seen me since I’m usually on the second floor.” He’s seen Ashe plenty of times from a bird’s eye view though, quietly reading.

“Oh. WellーI guess I’ll see you around?” Ashe smiles awkwardly as Yuri wheels in the cart next to several other, empty carts, the two of them now standing alone. The way he fiddles with the strap of his messenger bag isー _endearing,_ Yuri thinks.

He replies, with a welcoming smile, “I hope so.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


They do end up seeing each other around much more than that. It has to do with how things fall together - naturally, in the same way a tree grows, slowly taking root - that the two see each other in the library and greet each other carefully, stepping into the potential of a new friendship with the politeness of two strangers still getting to know each other. _How was class, did you go out for lunch, did you get any homework fromー?_ Common questions that don’t ask much of each other until Yuri takes Ashe under his wing, calls him _sparrow_ and gives him his locker combo one day when Ashe mentions as an aside how his locker was located on the other side of the school where none of his classes were.

Time spent outside of school is taken in slow steps as well; going out for coffee at lunch, trying out a few bakeries nearby that Ashe recommends, until Yuri’s being invited over for a study session at the end of the week.

It rains the afternoon of, neither of them with umbrellas - Yuri because he’d forgotten to check the weather this morning, Ashe because he overslept - so when they get off at Ashe’s stop they bolt out, Yuri stumbling after Ashe with a yell as Ashe laughs, tugging Yuri’s hand so he doesn’t slip in puddles and trip on his shoelaces.

They’re drenched to the core when they finally arrive, shivering with the frosty rain’s aftershocks - _It’s almost winter, isn’t it, Yuri?_ Ashe goes to fetch them towels as Yuri stands in his family’s front foyer, wincing out of his now soggy shoes. He takes off his socks for extra measure, straightening them out so they don’t crumple as they dry.

Yuri’s quick to towel himself off when Ashe returns while Ashe takes their shoes and socks to lie over an air vent, towel still around his shoulder. Yuri chides him gently, “You need to dry off your hair, sparrow,” before doing it himself, rubbing his hair with the towel Ashe had left hanging on him, catching the stray drops that snake down his neck and collected in his hair until the towel is damp, Yuri’s hands ache, and Ashe peeks up at him with a small, apologetic smile.

Ashe has stuck himself into every form of literature that exists, from the nonfiction to the webnovels to the audiobooks to the fiction. It shows the first time Yuri sees his room, stuffed to the brim with books filled with probably more words than Yuri’s ever thought of within a day. It’s a little haphazard - Yuri sidesteps the tottering pile by the door - but Ashe seems unbothered, so it’s probably functional for him, at least.

Ashe hurriedly kicks a pile of clothes under the bed as Yuri wanders to the edge of the room, eyeing the calendar and schedule hung up above the desk with scattered highlighters and pens, along with the framed picture of what Yuri surmises is Ashe’s family, from the familiar gray hair and freckles some of them have. There’s another picture with three more people who don’t look related - those must be the people who adopted Ashe and his siblings.

“Let’s get started, then?” Ashe asks nervously, and Yuri turns away.

It’s easy to tell when Ashe’s siblings arrive in the middle of their study session, because of how loud it becomes - the door to the house opens, and there’s a burst of chatter downstairs that echoes down the hall up to Ashe’s room. Yuri makes out at least three voices, a set of footsteps bouncing up the stairs until someone peeks into their room, a boy who looks just like Ashe but without the freckles and instead with brown eyes.

He blinks at them as Yuri’s playlist - a random mesh of 80s music - continues to play. He slams the door shut. The footsteps scurry away, only for two more to return, and another young face is peeking into Ashe’s room, this one with freckles and wide green eyes that stare owlishly. She shuts the door quietly enough, but Yuri still hears her yelling through the walls, “Christophe, I was right! The extra shoes were Ashe’s friend!”

A voice responds from downstairs, “Are they staying for dinner?”

The face peeks in again, and at normal speaking volume, she asks, “Are you staying for dinner?”

Amused, Yuri says, “Yes.”

The door shuts again. “He said yes!”

Ashe smiles in embarrassment. “Sorry about them. You get used to it.”

“It’s kind of cute,” Yuri admits. “They’re in middle school, I’m guessing?”

“Yup.”

Yuri’s invited to stay for dinner. The only person missing is Christophe’s mother, who they say is working overtime, but this means the table is set just right with one missing person Yuri fills in for, and he sits on Christophe’s right and Ashe’s left.

When Yuri introduces himself, Lonato makes a noise of recognition. “That name sounds familiarーare you maybe the child Rowe decided to take in?”

“I am.”

“He mentioned you, once. How has he been treating you?”

Yuri takes a moment to chew through his food before answering. “He’s alright,” he says eventually. It’s no secret that Yuri has been taken in by Rowe after his mother’s passing, but usually no one thinks to ask or mention it. “He has a habit of overworking himself, though,” he adds, to which Lonato laughs. It’s a deep, hearty laugh that comes from the stomach.

“I’ll have to catch up with him sometime, then, and remind him to slow down.”

Ashe’s siblings are almost opposites, like looking at the sun and the moon; while Eleana is loud and easily excitable, asking Yuri questions, Allen prefers to eat quietly, listening in and stealing glances of their guest throughout dinner.

“He’s like that whenever he first meets someone,” Ashe tells Yuri later once they’ve returned to his room. “Once he gets used to you, he’ll start talking to you.”

“I’ll be looking forward to when he does.”

That night, Lonato drives Yuri home with Ashe, even though Yuri insists he doesn’t need to be accompanied and that there are better things to spend time on. The house they arrive at is dark, lights out. Rowe still isn’t home yet, Yuri notes at the sight of the empty driveway, and thanks Lonato for the ride back.

Ashe leans out his rolled-down window to call to him, “I’ll see you Monday?”

“Unless you managed to catch a cold in this weather, sparrow, of course.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


From his view upside down on Ashe’s bed, Yuri squints at the book cover in Ashe’s hands, pausing with his own hand halfway into the chip bag in his lap. “Didn’t you say you finished that yesterday?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I did. But I like reading something at least three times before I let it go.”

 _Let it go,_ Ashe says, like he’s releasing a bird into the wildlife after treating its wounded wing. Only Ashe talks about books the way he does, but Yuri should not feel as fond about it as he does.

“Tell me why?”

Ashe places the book down with a carefully placed bookmark - he’s not like Hapi, who substitutes whatever she has on hand as a bookmark, whether it be a gift card, a tissue, or a leaf she found on the ground, and he’s not Linhardt, who either uses origami bookmarks or folds the papers of the books if he doesn’t have any on-hand - but not before Yuri sees a flash of highlighter green between the pages along with a yellow sticky note. “The first time you read a book is your first impression. The second time lets you analyze everything with a clear mind, and the third time lets you appreciate it as a whole. You should only do it if you like the book, though. Forcing yourself to read something isn’t a good idea.”

Yuri shifts, turning over on his stomach, legs swinging in the air. “That must mean you like this book, then, sparrow?”

“Yes.”

“What do you like about it?”

That’s all it takes to spur Ashe into a tangent as Yuri nods along, flipping through the book idly with his clean hand, not really reading the paragraphs but instead seeing Ashe’s little notes and highlighted quotes, feeling an unknown curiosity, like he’s reading another language.

Ashe pauses. “Do you want to read it for yourself? I can lend you my copy.”

It’s the unknown curiosity that makes Yuri say, “Yes.”

“Okay, just let me take out my notes so they aren’t in the wayー”

Yuri holds the book out of Ashe’s grasp when he reaches for it. “They aren’t in the way.”

A crease appears between Ashe’s brows. “Are you sure?” he presses. “I can just put them back later, it’s not a big deal.”

Yuri looks down at a carefully written note on the sticky pad, a simple _connects to thematic topics of gender roles and gender fluidity with culture!!_ and trails a finger through the words, carefully not to smudge the ink. “I like it,” he says. “It’s like seeing inside your thoughts, and I like reading them.”

“Oh.” Ashe looks at a loss for words. Flustered, he says, weakly, “Will you let me finish the book before I give it to you, please?”

Smug at the sight of how a red-faced Ashe makes the freckles on his face stand out more, Yuri gives him his book and turns back around.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Yuri ends up reading more as Ashe’s friend. Before, he used to occasionally pick up whatever Hapi was reading or snatch parts of Bernadetta’s stories when she was unaware he was lurking over her shoulder, and other than that it was the manga Balthus read - mostly shounen - or podcasts Yuri stumbled upon on online posts. But now it feels like he’s reaching into a bag of skittles and blindly grabbing a handful with the range of books Ashe reads.

“Have you found something you liked?” Ashe asks one evening spent at Ashe’s house again, and Yuri tilts his head, thumbing the book in his hands.

“Horror,” he decides. “And thrillers and mysteries. But anything, I think, is fine as long as it’s entertaining. I don’t mind well-written romcoms, or fantasy with a solid worldbuilding.”

In a surprising move, Ashe takes his hand. Startled, Yuri’s ready to tease him about how bold he’s being, especially now that they’re alone in his room, but Ashe’s eyes are sparkling when he says, with a low tone of controlled excitement, like he’s scared to drive Yuri away, “I have so many recommendations for you.”

That night Yuri staggers home with a list of books to read larger than whatever required reading a teacher could give him in a textbook. Somehow, as he traces Ashe’s messy writing on the sticky notes of the latest book he’d shoved into Yuri’s bag on his way out, he doesn’t regret it.

  
  
  
  
  
  


iii.

“Let’s go somewhere after graduation,” Hapi brings up before the end of their lunch period.

Constance, who has her hands tangled in a snag in Hapi’s hair, agrees readily. “Where would you like to go?”

Balthus is the first to shout, “Arcade!” over the sound of the boys down the hall doing...whatever. Their daily scuffles. Yuri doesn’t want to know.

Hapi frowns. “We already go there often.”

“How about the beach?” Yuri suggests, plucking a grape from Constance’s lunch, the girl too distracted trying to comb through Hapi’s hair to notice.

“I don’t like the sun,” Constance says immediately.

“Just bring your parasol. You’re not scared of a little sun, are you, Shady Lady?”

“You could use the new parasol you bought,” Hapi suggests. “The colour matches with your swimsuit.”

Constance’s face blots a splotchy red. “OhーI suppose I could do that.”

“I’ll help you put on your sunscreen,” Hapi says innocently.

“We can play beach volleyball!” Balthus says.

“...Is it alright if I invite sparrow?”

Hapi takes an uncomfortable amount of time to answer, playing through a round on her 3DS while Yuri waits, sneaking out more of Constance’s grapes. “I don’t want a lot of people there. If your sparrow comes, he might invite Linhardt, who’ll bring Caspar, who’ll bring Raphael, who’ll rope in Ignatz and Leonie, and from there it’ll be Marianne, Hilda, then Claude and Dimitri along with his childhood friends...”

“We could hold it the same day Hilda’s throwing her end-of-the-year graduation party,” Constance points out. “That way, they’ll likely cancel on the beach in favour of the party.”

Hapi lets out a pleased sigh. “This is why I’m dating you.”

As Constance sputters, Yuri turns to Balthis, who’s frowning. “I kinda wanted to go to that party.”

“We’ve already seen everyone get shitfaced before,” Yuri says. “It’s really not something worth seeing the second time around, friend.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Constance, Hapi and Balthus take Balthus’s car there, but since there isn’t enough space and they live far enough away that picking them up would be a hassle, Yuri and Ashe take the train.

“We have to wake up a little earlier, but it’s worth it,” Yuri tells him as they file into empty seats. “They’re probably fighting over their music taste the whole way there.”

“I don’t mind whatever music you want,” Ashe says, and then he pulls out a book from his backpack, because apparently he brings at least one with him everywhere. Yuri gives him an earbud, stretches out his legs, and picks out the same playlist they’ve been playing lately while studying. He settles in for the ride.

He scrolls through social media feeds, checks his email out of boredom while the scenery outside remains largely unchanged; they pass cityscapes and ride alongside empty highways while the sun brightens the sky into a breezy blue. It’s a small, pleasant surprise during the trip when Ashe stops reading to lay his head on Yuri’s shoulder, closing his eyes to sleep. He distracts Yuri the whole ride there with his warm presence, hair tickling Yuri’s neck; this close, he can count all the freckles on his face, see every shift of emotion on his face as he dreams.

Their friends are awaiting their arrival at the beach. Yuri hangs up on Balthis when he sees them under a large beach umbrella, Hapi waving at them. They get pulled into a tag team game of beach volleyball where Hapi and Balthus win; Yuri insists it’s because he and Ashe haven’t gotten used to the beach yet and they play another losing round while Constance keeps track of the points. Sweat pools in the bends of their knees, elbows; sand gathers under their feet and pulls them down; the sun tries to melt them down to bones.

Yuri doesn’t give up on facing off Balthus and Hapi. A break, that’s all, he tells them, unleashing them to the other people on the beach to challenge; let someone else handle the duo for a change. The sand is too warm, the water too cold, but Yuri wades in deeper, all the way up to his hips, until he feels like the tide can roll in and take him with it.

He’s stuck his hands into the water when he hears someone stumbling toward him. “Yuri? What are you doing?”

Yuri squints into the water like it’ll give him the answer he’s looking for. “I dropped my sunglasses.”

“Oh.” Yuri thinks maybe Ashe is going to help him, but instead warm hands reach from behind to pull his hair back.

He freezes as Ashe continues gathering his hair into one hand. “What are you doing?”

“Tying your hair back. You don’t want it to get wet, right?”

It doesn’t really matter, but Yuri shrugs it off. Suddenly he’s not sure what to focus on, Ashe combing a hand through his hair, the cold water slapping into him, or the fact that he still hasn’t found his sunglasses.

Ashe keeps talking. “It’s a good thing the bracelet Annette gave me works as a hair tie as well. I think this works for now.”

Yuri reaches for the back of his head, feeling the small beads in Ashe’s bracelet now holding his hair back. “Thanks, sparrow.”

“I think you missed a spot while you were applying sunscreen, by the way. The back of your neck was red.” Ashe takes off his blue bucket hat and fits it onto Yuri’s head. “Be careful, okay?”

A strange emotion is trying to rise out of Yuri’s chest. He quells it with another step back, digs his feet into the sand, but the tide still takes him closer to Ashe; for good measure, he tugs the bucket hat further down his face, mutters, “Worry about yourself first, sparrow.”

“I’m fine, I got Constance to help me put on sunscreen.” Deeming Yuri safe on his own terms, Ashe is already reaching into the water, searching, and Yuri joins him.

Ashe doesn’t give up, even when Yuri feels his back aching and has to bite his tongue to keep from telling Ashe to give up, that the sunglasses were probably washed away into the sea and that it’s not worth wasting time over, but every time he looks over at him he’s searching with a single minded focus, and the sight of it quiets all of Yuri’s thoughts; he keeps searching.

“Ah.”

Like a trophy, Ashe raises them into the air; the sunglasses glisten, dripping wet in the sun.

Yuri wants to laugh. He takes his sopping wet sunglasses from Ashe’s hands; in return, he places Ashe’s bucket hat back on his head. “Thanks, sparrow.”

Ashe giggles. “It kind of felt like a treasure hunt.”

Yuri smiles.

Something thin wraps around his ankles and tugs forcefully; Yuri goes underwater and gasps on his way back up, shivering cold all over. He can hear Hapi cackling behind him and yelling, “Pay up, B!” with Balthus swearing in the distance.

Yuri wipes hair out of his face and glares at Hapi, who only tilts her head with a smirk.

The next while has Yuri issuing his payback, dunking a spluttering Hapi underwater and heading Balthus’ way, who runs away while yelling, _aren’t swimsuits meant to get wet?_ While he’s right, Yuri still wants his revenge, which he gets eventually, served on a silver platter that is Ashe leaping on Balthus’ back and serving as a distraction for Yuri to tackle Balthus into the water.

When they all return to their spot on the beach, leaving a trail of water in their tracks, Constance simply looks at them, holds up her phone and says, “I took pictures.”

Later, as they finish the last of their melting ice cream while waiting for the train that’ll take them back, Ashe looks back at him and says, “Today was fun. I’m glad you invited me” with a full smile, and Yuri looks at him. Ashe’s ice cream cone is melting in one hand while his other hangs free.

His mind makes a hundred leaps, possibilities and responses, but his mouth opens without permission to blurt out, “Do you wanna share a dorm with me for college?”

Ashe looks surprised before he remembers, “Oh right, we’re going to the same college. Yeah, that’s a good idea, Yuri.”

The train tracks rumble, and Yuri uses that as an excuse to turn away and watch its arrival. “Don’t expect me to do all the house chores for you, sparrow.”

Ashe’s laugh is drowned out by the screech of the train, but it hits as warm air by Yuri’s ear. “Of course I won’t make you do everything yourself.”

They snag seats in the train, and Ashe pulls out the same book he did this morning; this time, he doesn’t fall asleep, and Yuri alternates between checking his phone or looking at Ashe’s reflection from the window as the sky transforms into a peach pink-orange sunset.

  
  
  
  
  
  


He wouldn’t have minded if Ashe had fallen asleep on him again, even if it made his shoulder damp from the wetness of Ashe’s hair.

  
  
  
  
  
  


iv.

Sleepless nights come and go; the brightness of laptop screens burn into their retinas and blur their vision, and coffee stains their once spotless mugs, but Ashe and Yuri graduate with little fanfare, another checkpoint in life received.

“What are you thinking of doing now, Yuri?” Ashe asks, tipsy on celebratory drinks in Ashe’s room in Lonato’s house - still Ashe’s room, even if he hasn’t properly used it in four years, the same books lining the shelves and old clothes in drawers.

The alcohol burns on its way down as Yuri throws it back in one go; he stares up at Ashe’s star-stickered ceiling. “Don’t know,” he says truthfully. Never has, really. Jokingly, he adds, “You know, in another life, I would’ve been a gang leader.”

Ashe hums. He’s laid his head on the table, facing Yuri’s direction but he’s not looking at him, eyes unfocused. “Yeah, that’s cool,” he mutters. “As long as we’re still roommates, it’s fine.”

Teasingly, Yuri flicks him on the nose. “You’re not getting sentimental now, are you?” He huffs a laugh when Ashe wrinkles his nose adorably. He’s casual when he says, “Maybe we should rent an apartment together.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to make ends meet as only one person, after all...have you seen some of the rates some condos have? I doubt I’d be able to handle it on my own with just one job, so what do you say, sparrow?”

Ashe blinks a few times like he’s only now listening properly to the conversation they’ve been having. “Hm?”

“An apartment together, you and me.”

“Hmm...oh? Oh!” Ashe straightens up, knees banging the table. “Oh, good, yes, that’d be nice, Yuri. You’re the best roommate, and...”

“...And?” Yuri asks, but Ashe has sunken back onto the table, and Yuri, after lifting a curl of hair, finds him breathing deeply, asleep.

Yuri laughs. He lets Ashe sleep on, carries him to his bed after struggling a bit and tucks him in as gently as possible. That night, he sleeps curled up under the low table in Ashe’s room, hears Ashe’s rhythmic breathing as his head whirl; the stars on the ceiling swirl together in the dark and become one big glowing mass of green in Yuri’s dream, and then he dreams of nothing at all.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Ah, that book!”

“Yes?”

The girl in front of Yuri blushes like she hadn’t meant to blurt that out; she won’t look Yuri in the eyes. “It’s aーit’s a nice book, isn’t it?”

Reaching up to push up his glasses, Yuri considers the book in his hands, turns it over. His eyes catch a sticky note stuck in the margins with a familiar scrawl, and he smiles. “The writing style is long and meandering, and it’s easy to get lost in, but the way the protagonist thinks is interesting, and the symbolism with comparing the painting to his heart is one with an impact, comparing hiding the painting away the same way people hide away their true feelings. All in all, it’s a good book to read if you don’t fall asleep three pages in.”

The girl looks like she’s been punched in the face. “Uh, yeah. That,” she says eloquently, and skitters away.

A snicker nearby catches his attention. “You scared her away so quickly.”

Yuri frowns at Hapi as she leans over the counter. “It’s only expected that I’d give her my opinion if she asked about the book. Why else would she be talking to a librarian?”

“I don’t know, ‘cause the librarian’s hot?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Yuri snorts quietly. “I’m not messing with a minor.”

“That, and Ashe would be mad at you.”

“What does sparrow have to do with this?”

Hapi stares at him with raised eyebrows while Yuri escapes her gaze by looking down at his book, pretending to read. Over the course of their friendship he’s come to recognize that look, and it never means anything good. “Never mind, then.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


The empty apartment is what Yuri returns to, hanging up his keys and coat on a rack and placing his shoes aside so Ashe won’t have to stumble into them later when he arrives. Yuri glares at the fluffy black bottlebrush tail sticking out from a cardboard box in the living room when he leaves the hallway, forgoing the perfectly acceptable cat bed they’d bought him this winter.

“Asshole,” Yuri mutters, and turns his attention to more worthwhile matters: the fridge, and what to make for dinner.

Ashe steals Yuri’s attention away at his arrival; he always does, which is why Yuri’s glad he’s at least finished making dinner when he hears the door unlock and the call, “I’m home!”

“Welcome back,” Yuri says, not looking in Ashe’s direction as a small black creature streaks into the hall, piling dinner into two plates; Ashe laughs, and in a soft voice says, “Did you miss me?”

Yuri doesn’t answer, because he’s clearly talking to the cat.

Ashe wanders in eventually, not one to keep Yuri waiting even to baby the cat that’s curled up in his arms, purring up a storm as Yuri tucks himself into the table. “It smells nice.”

“It tastes even better. C’mon, try it.” Yuri gestures to the chair across from him with his fork, and Ashe hurries to comply, setting Cheeto down gently and rushing to wash his hands.

“How was work today?” Yuri asks after dinner is done and Ashe has volunteered himself to wash the dishes, scrubbing at them as Yuri lays his head in his folded arms, watching him from the counter.

“Busy at lunch, as always. The restaurant is doing well, and Dedue is fine as well.” Ashe smiles to himself in satisfaction. He looks content, fulfilled in a way Yuri’s seen often since he’s started working with Dedue, and it makes Yuri a little bittersweet. “How was work for you?”

“Oh, you know,” Yuri flips a hand, “sorting books on shelves, helping people look for books they can’t find...same as always.”

“I always thought it was a little funny, considering how much I loved books that you were the one who became the librarian. Do you like books now, Yuri?”

The lighting in the kitchen does horrible things to Ashe’s skin, gives him a sicklier look and dulls the green of his eyes as he pauses in scraping off a particularly difficult stain to meet Yuri’s eyes.

Yuri’s entranced anyway. When did he get so weak to how Ashe looks at him?

 _I don’t like books,_ Yuri thinks _I likeー_

“Of course I do,” Yuri replies with a smile. “You’re the one who introduced me to them, after all, sparrow.”

The red that swallows up Ashe’s pale skin leaves Yuri satisfied as Ashe returns to rigorously scrubbing the plates once more.

They wander naturally into the living room afterward, because that’s where they fall away together; Ashe plays a cooking show on TV as background noise while Yuri uses Ashe’s Switch like it’s his own, completing difficult missions in Ashe’s game that he can’t bother to research how to clear on his own while Ashe reads the book in his lap.

It’s only Ashe’s giggling that makes Yuri look up, and he catches sight of a familiar cover that makes his thumbs stutter, allowing the enemy he’s been struggling with for the past five minutes to kill his character. The [Restart?] option pops up, but he ignores it. “You’re rereading?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, it’s been a while and I missed it...I didn’t know you added your own sticky notes, though. Your side comments are really funny. I like reading them while I go through the story again.” Ashe pauses at Yuri’s odd silence, looks up. “You okay?”

Not sure what emotion his face was holding before, Yuri smiles at him. “Fine. I think I’ll go to bed early tonight.”

“Huh? Alright, good night.” If Ashe is bothered by his abrupt leave, he doesn’t say anything about it. 

“Good night, sparrow.”

The sounds from the TV follow him as he walks away. Quietly, Yuri slips into his room and closes the door.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Is this how Ashe felt when Yuri first told him he could keep his notes inside the books? Trying to remember if he had written anything incriminating or stupid or _revealing,_ like posting a group picture and only realizing afterward that you looked off - squinting too hard because of the sun, or an earring caught in your hair.

Yuri would read a book to distract himself, but all the books he has at the moment have Ashe’s sticky notes inside.

He settles for listening to a podcast while his heart races, wondering what his high school self had possibly written to embarrass him now.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“You read fanfiction, right?”

A few years back, Bernadetta would have stuttered, squawked _What? What, what, what is that?!_ at the top of her lungs to avoid trapping herself in an awkward scenario, but now she just looks up at him her cup of tea and says slowly, “Uh, yes?”

Internally, Yuri wipes away a proud tear as he says, “What do you think of stories that are left incomplete?”

“Oh.” Bernadetta frowns. “It sucks that we don’t really see the ending, but it’s not like we can force the author to complete it. They have their own life, and their own problems, and it’s not like they’re getting paid to write.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Also, writing is difficult. Maybe it seems easy on the outside, and when you start it seems simple, but...it’s not. It’s easy to start a story; the problem is actually finishing it.”

Yuri sits on that while Bernadetta takes a sip of her tea. The ice tea he bought is perspiring, leaving a stained circle on the table that he wipes away with a napkin.

“It’s not like incomplete stories are really incomplete.”

“Hm?”

“...How do I explain this,” Bernadetta mutters. “I guess it’s like, since the story is incomplete, the author hands it off to the reader to finish the story on their own terms? Since the story isn’t finished, the reader can imagine whatever they want to happen next: a happy ending for the protagonist, whichever characters they want dead are dead, characters they want to get together start dating. All problems are overcome...with their imagination.”

Outside the window of the cafe, people lead their own lives as the snow begins to melt and the sky opens up to reveal the sun, its reverence ignored by the people below.

“Is it worth following a story if you don’t know whether there’ll be an ending or not?”

Bernadetta shrugs and murmurs eventually, “Journey, not destination,” before taking another sip of her tea.

  
  
  
  
  
  


v.

The moon hangs full in the sky, providing enough light by the open window for Yuri to read. A sharp gust of wind makes him shiver and curse, and he locks the window down; even with spring edging into summer, it’s still too cold at night to indulge in the same late night reading Yuri normally does in warmer weather.

The silence in the apartment makes Yuri think Ashe has already gone to bed, but he’s proven wrong when he turns around to see the man curled into the kitchen table, chest rising and falling rhythmically, a book of his own next to his folded arms. The sight makes Yuri chuckle gently, the realization of how much of Ashe has remained the same over the years; seasons will come and go, the sun will rise in the morning and the moon will reign the night sky, and Ashe will fall asleep at the kitchen table while reading a book.

“Aren’t you too old to be falling asleep at the table like this?” Yuri says quietly, tracing the shape of Ashe’s ear, running a hand through soft gray hair. Ashe murmurs in his sleep, hand clenching and unclenching into a fist.

His glasses are lopsided on his face, knocked askew in his sleep to dangle precariously. Yuri plucks them off with nimble fingers, folds them and places it on the table instead for Ashe to find when he wakes.

Yuri’s trying to remember when Ashe’s wrist was first littered with colourful hair ties all along his left arm. He always had one on hand before, if Yuri ever needed to tie his hair back while doing chores, and Yuri wonders if this was all for his sake.

Leaving Ashe at the kitchen table, a quilted blanket over his shoulders, is a decision Yuri comes to on his own, not wanting to disturb his sleep. In the morning, the sun will rise, and it will be business as usual.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


\+ i.

Except it’s not entirely business as usual. There’s a strange thought that’s taken root in Yuri, wiggling in its corner and slowly growing with the passing days. Maybe it’s been there for a while now, stubborn in its growth, and Yuri has only decided to acknowledge its presence now.

So Yuri looks closer; he looks at Ashe, who leans into Yuri on days that wear him down until he feels like a wisp in Yuri’s arms, whose quiet presence never grates on Yuri, who’s entangled himself so willingly, completely into Yuri’s life that Yuri can’t separate the two, like how the root of most languages is Latin, like how Earth was never supposed to have a sun but how life has learned to live on the sun’s energy. Ashe, who lends Yuri his books with his notes scribbled into the margins in his own way of leaving a mark of the world, who leaves a mark on Yuri every time he smiles his way.

Yuri looks at Ashe, but most importantly, he looks into himself; built out of a million stories, incomplete and not, happy ending or not, countless words that aren’t his, many of which learned through the books Ashe gave him.

“Let’s go to the ocean again,” Yuri tells Ashe.

“Oh right, we haven’t been in a few years, have we?” Ashe pauses in his reading, maybe to reminisce like Yuri is, the foaming waves and the deep blue shades of the water and feet stumbling in warm sand. “I’m free on Sunday.”

“It’s a date, then,” Yuri says, hiding a smile behind his own book at Ashe’s choke.

  
  
  
  
  
  


_The first time you read a book is your first impression. The second time lets you analyze everything with a clear mind, and the third time lets you appreciate it as a whole._

Yuri could study Ashe for a lifetime and it still wouldn’t be enough.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The train’s doors slide open, sunlight seeping into the open space as Ashe steps out of the train, one hand raised over his face to look into the sun, his other hand hanging empty at his side as people stream past him on both ends.

Slowly, Yuri steps into it, slots their hands together, interlocks each finger one at a time. He swings their hands like he’s testing the feel of Ashe in his hand, if he wants to keep holding him.

He hums, finds something comforting with the extra weight he holds, and looks at Ashe, who’s staring at him, mouth hanging open in surprise. In any other circumstance, Yuri would laugh.

Yuri tried to write a letter to his deceased mother, once; all the words fell through, washed away by the sea with no roots to hold them down. Right now feels the same as then, but Yuri gulps down his doubts; he lets the sea wash over him. He is a tree in the ocean, his roots in the words Ashe gave him, ones whose meanings he searched late at night and found in the scribbled notes in the corners of pages of books, words Yuri treasures more than any book can give him.

Apologetically, Yuri says, “Were you waiting long?”

Ashe laughs. With the same hand he uses to flip the pages he reads, he swings their hands with the energy of a child. “I would’ve been fine just staying your roommate.”

“I know. That’s why I finally decided to do something, for both our sakes.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have to wait long.” Ashe looks thoughtful while Yuri strokes his thumb with his own. “I didn’t mind the wait, you know. Stories with slow pacing or slow burns, usually their endings are worthwhile.”

“This isn’t the end of a story.”

“Of course it’s not, it’s only 9am.” Ashe tugs hum forward to their destination. The smell of the ocean rises as the train starts up, speeding past them and whipping up air. “C’mon! I wanna try a different ice cream flavour this time.”

“It’s not even lunchtime yet...”

Exasperated but content, Yuri holds his hat against the wind and lets Ashe decide for them, falling into place beside him naturally.

**Author's Note:**

> This story formed late one night when I was thinking about smth along the lines of ‘stories that impacted me more through a second reading/watching.’ I’m glad I gave them a second chance.
> 
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